How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

The sixth and final video in our "Life in business" series gives you the chance to immerse yourself in the life of a large company. SEMMARIS operates the largest fresh produce market in the world: Rungis, near Paris.

Who are the stakeholders of this semi-public company (public entities, private firms, employees, supervisory bodies, etc.)? What challenges must it meet on a day-to-day basis (particularly in terms of logistics and hygiene) and in the longer term (expanding into e-commerce, internationalisation, etc.)? Find out the answers to these questions in a joint interview with the CEO of SEMMARIS and his Market and Human Resources Director.

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Lenght: 4’03

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 30 August 2017. Updated on 20 February 2024


How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

Second to last video of our series. Discover a very small  business, the restaurant L’Épi d’or, in the district of Les Halles in Paris. Created in 1880, it is now run by enthusiastic manager and employees. They have to adjust to the different categories of clients, to an irregular activity and, in the longer term, to the transformation of the district where they are located.

How is this business managed on a daily basis? What are the challenges to be met: team size, positioning in terms of prices and products, financial balance, etc. ? How does the team  feel about its work? Answers in this cross-interview of the owner-manager and the waiter of the Epi d’Or.

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Lenght: 4’39

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 07 June 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

With this fourth video of our series "Life in business", discover Microdon, a company that introduced in France the concept of community donations. As a start-up of the innovative financing sector, Microdon  offers an "embedded generosity" system, via rounding on purchases or rounding on wages.

How to develop daily relations with customers, companies and associations? What are the specificities, in terms of management and governance, that make Microdon a company of the social and community economy? What are its prospects for the future? Answers in this cross-interview of Microdon’s chairman-founder and its marketing director.

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Lenght: 5’06

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 03 May 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

In this second video of our "Business life" series, discover Happydemics, a start-up that offers companies a survey technology. How did the idea of launching a new product come about? What is a business angel? A business incubator? How does a start-up team experience its work every day? How does it see its future? A few answers in this two-way interview of the founder and CEO of the start-up and its sales manager.

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Lenght: 4’23

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 31 January 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

In the third video in our "Life in business" series, you will find out about Thuasne, a company specialised in the manufacture of stretch fabrics for use in sportswear and in medical textiles. Learn about an intermediate-sized enterprise company (ISE) that has been operating for more than a century.

How did the company overcome the crisis in the traditional textile industry? How did it manage to meet the challenges of innovation, competition and globalisation? And what part did the company’s 2,000 employees play in these changes? Find out the answers to these questions through a joint interview with the Group CEO and the  workshop manager of the Group’s Saint-Étienne plant.

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Lenght: 5’08

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 23 March 2017. Updated on 20 February 2024


How do companies organise their production, manage labour relations, find sources of financing, implement strategies for development? Are the answers to these daily challenges comparable for a start-up, a restaurant, a food retailer, the largest market in France, an industrial company, a company that introduced embedded donations in France?

With Citéco find out, through this series of short videos, how 6 productive organisations go about meeting the daily challenges faced by companies: Biocoop, a local business; Happydemics, a start-up; Semmaris, a large company; Microdon, a social and responsible company; Thuasne, an export-oriented industrial company; and Épi d’or, a restaurant.

In each of these videos, interviews with the company manager and one of its employees provide a two-way perspective on the life of the company: what does the company do, how is it managed on a daily basis, what are its future prospects?

This first video immerses you in the world of a store, Biocoop, and shows you how the values defended by the brand are translated in terms of hierarchical organisation, management of shop opening hours and revenue sharing.

In subsequent videos, you will discover 5 other companies. Be patient, an upcoming episode of the series will soon be online...

Source: Banque de France – Citéco/la Cité de l’économie et de la monnaie

Audience: 12+

Language: english

Length: 4’30

Watch the other episodes of this series of 6 videos:


Published on 03 January 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


Does the fact that two phenomena occur at the same time imply that one is the cause of the other? How to interpret this simultaneity, which economists, in particular, call a correlation? This is what a statistician explains to his cat Albert in this short video.

If the countries where the inhabitants consume the most chocolate are also those that count the most Nobel prizes, does eating chocolate make us all the more intelligent? The statistician points out that any correlation does not reflect a causal relationship. He warns against hasty conclusions and invites readers to use their judgment when reading the press or scientific publications. 

Source: Youtube « La statistique expliquée à mon chat » (Bruxelles)

Objective: Analysing a correlation, raising awareness of its difficulties of interpretation. While limiting the use of numbers, the video introduces the notions of correlation, causality, confounding factor. Through the figure of the cat Albert, the public is invited to think for itself and is thus introduced to statistical reasoning.

Audience: 12+

Language: French

Lenght: 4’49

 

 

To see other videos of the channel La statistique expliquée à mon chat.

On the same topic, do not hesitate to consult our quiz-dataviz “Getting data to talk” and our pedagogical guide "How to read infographies and datavisualisations?".


Published on 01 December 2016. Updated on 13 June 2024


In this video, the writer Stefan Zweig takes you on a tour of France’s gold reserves. He opens the doors of the “Souterraine” (the underground vault), this 11,000 square meter room located 25 meters under the main building of the Banque de France. A journey in very secure depths. But also an evocation of the relationship between mankind and the precious metal.

Biographer, novelist, journalist of Viennese origin, Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) embodies the figure of the intellectual messenger of a universal culture. Bestowed with a great curiosity, he was an insatiable traveler and chronicler. He was among the most widely read foreign authors in France. In 1932, in his book “Visite à la Souterraine”, he gave his impressions of the security devices set up to protect France’s gold reserves.

How then did he manage to enter this very secure place, usually closed to visitors? Stefan Zweig used his persuasive force wisely: he got his editor, Grasset, to write a request to access “the most gigantic gold mine of our contemporary world”. The exceptional privilege granted to him enables us to have an artist’s view of this unique place. For Zweig, “while Dante’s paradise and hell had seven circles, the cellars of the Banque de France have perhaps even more”. The “Souterraine” counts hundreds of pillars, “a real forest of stone columns”, and an armored door, “heavy with threats”, weighing close to seven tons. With poetry, he endeavours to describe a “vertiginous dive”, a “disproportionate” place, an architectural feat “demonstrating our technical genius”.

While Dante’s paradise and hell had seven circles, the cellars of the Banque de France have perhaps even more.

The writer also looks at the relationship between men and this famous precious metal. For this observer of the interwar period, a period characterised by the gold exchange standard, France’s gold reserves appeared to constitute “the heart of our economic world, the epicentre of the invisible waves that affect markets, stock exchanges, banks”. He had, in any case, understood that “creative power is never derived from matter in itself, but from faith” – i.e. the confidence – “that it inspires”.

Immerse yourself in this “wonderful labyrinth” with this video in computer-generated images.

For further information


Published on 26 January 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


Do the buildings of financial companies and administrations have specific characteristics? What messages do they convey to those who look at them, visit them or work in them? These are the issues addressed by the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) in a richly illustrated issue of its bulletin.

As Carmen Hofmann points out in the editorial, "corporate architecture is corporate identity". Bank buildings are one of many ways of illustrating the relationships of human societies to money.

Bank buildings have long had, and often still have, a massive, prestigious appearance. Architecture is responsible for conveying to customers, competitors, public authorities and employees, an impression of stability, solidity, seriousness, power and even opulence.

Financial architecture, at the crossroad between splendour and sobriety, tradition and modernity

This objective does not exclude variations according to the location, with in particular the desire to take into account the national identity of each country. And variations over time: the financial architecture thus oscillates between splendor and sobriety, tradition and modernity. From the 1960s, the emphasis has been on less ostentatious, more functional buildings. Nowadays, there is also a tendency to bring to the fore new technologies and corporate social and environmental responsibility, including the company’s integration in the local community.

The three lives of the Hôtel Gaillard

The Hôtel Gaillard in Paris is one of the examples presented in this bulletin by a contribution from two members of the Citéco team, Régine Casassa and Philippe Bonzom. Built by a private banker in 1882 and turned into a bank branch by the Banque de France in 1923, this historic monument will begin its third life as a place open to the public and dedicated to economic education.
 


Published on 09 February 2017. Updated on 13 June 2024


Our selection of resources for a better understanding of the context and consequences of Brexit.

On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom, by referendum, decided to leave the European Union: this is “Brexit”.

On its Twitter thread, Citéco offers you a wide range of resources to help you gain a better understanding of the background, issues at stake and consequences of this decision. A variety of formats (videos, data visualisation, infographics, interactive timelines, etc.) are available for new insights on different aspects of Brexit: economic, financial, geopolitical, trade, historical, etc.

These resources are updated and added to automatically, as new developments occur.

View our Brexit tweets

By clicking on the link above, you can access each of the resources in our selection even if you are not a registered Twitter user. This said, we naturally strongly recommend that … you also join our followers on Twitter!

Our tweets are in French. Some of the selected resources are in English.


Published on 11 October 2016. Updated on 20 February 2024


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